Scholars argue that Pushkin's account may be inaccurate due to the author’s desire to elevate the status of his ancestors and family.

[4] [5] Richard Pankhurst, the former professor at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, believed the young Abram, Ibrahim or Abraham, as he named him, was born around 1698.

However, after his father died in battle trying to defend his territory from the Ottoman Turks trying to enslave the population, Abram was captured and taken to Constantinople by ship.

During Abram's studies, conflict broke out between France and Spain, and he fought in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, rising to the rank of captain.

[7] In Paris he met and befriended such Enlightenment figures as the Baron de Montesquieu and Voltaire (this claim by his biographer Hugh Barnes is disputed by reviewer Andrew Kahn[8]).

Gannibal became a prominent member of her court, rose to the rank of major-general, and became superintendent of Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), a position he held from 1742 to 1752.

In an official document that Gannibal submitted in 1742 to Empress Elizabeth, while petitioning for the rank of nobility and a coat of arms, he asked for the right to use a family crest emblazoned with an elephant and the mysterious word "FVMMO", which may mean "homeland" in the Kotoko language.

In his book, Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg, Hugh Barnes writes of meeting with the sultan of Logone-Birni, who gave him the same translation of the word.

[3] However, Frances Somers-Cocks, author of The Moor of St Petersburg: In the Footsteps of a Black Russian, met the same sultan and received a different translation for FVMMO.

She also suggested that FVMMO stands for the Latin expression Fortuna Vitam Meam Mutavit Omnino which means "Fortune has changed my life entirely.

[1][13] Her paternal grandfather was Gustaf Siöberg, Rittmester til Estrup, who died in 1694, whose wife Clara Maria Lauritzdatter Galtung (ca.

[18] Vladimir Nabokov cast doubt on Gannibal's ancestry, based on research findings during his work translating Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin.

Nabokov disagreed with Anuchin's theory, stating that it was just as likely that Gannibal was referring to "the Lagona region of equatorial Africa, south of Lake Chad.

[3] The Beninese historian Dieudonné Gnammankou, an expert on Russia,[3] studied Russian, French and African sources and argued that Gannibal was indeed from Logone-Birni and was most likely the son of a chief in the ancient sultanate.

[7] He believed that the pattern of slave trade around Lake Chad made that region a more plausible likelihood for Gannibal's birthplace than Gondar, Ethiopia.

After consulting with the Sultan of Logone-Birni, Barnes found that an inscription on Gannibal's crest, which was hitherto undecipherable, corresponded with the term for "homeland" in the local Kotoko language of central Africa.

[3] However, Frances Somers-Cocks, author of The Moor of St Petersburg: In the Footsteps of a Black Russian, met the same sultan and received a different translation for FVMMO.

She also suggested that FVMMO stands for the Latin expression Fortuna Vitam Meam Mutavit Omnino, which means "Fortune has changed my life entirely".

The plaque declares that he was a graduate of the royal artillery academy of La Fère, and later became chief military engineer and general-in-chief of the Imperial Russian Army.

Dieudonné Gnammankou, whose research into Gannibal's background was largely responsible for the ceremony at La Fère taking place, also served as the main speaker at a symposium following the event.

[7] Alexander Pushkin used his great-grandfather Abram Gannibal as the model for Ibrahim, the lead character in his unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great.

[20] A stage version of the work was written by Carlyle Brown and premiered at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's 13th Southern Writers' Project in March 2001.

[23] In the Lesnaya painting, the young boy is dressed in traditional slave attire, which Gannibal did not wear due to his status under Peter the Great.